How to Give Better Gifts, According to Science

Most people have gotten bad gifts: that fruitcake you didn't ask for or that tie you'll never wear.

Now, a group of marketing researchers has investigated exactly what makes a bad gift and the reasons people buy such presents for their loved ones in the first place.

The researchers suggested that one reason for bad gifts is that the giver and the recipient focus on different things. The giver focuses on the moment of the exchange, wanting to surprise or impress the recipient, while the recipient focuses on the long-term usefulness or practically of the gift.

"What we found was that the giver wants to 'wow' the recipient and give a gift that can be enjoyed immediately, in the moment, while the recipient is more interested in a gift that provides value over time," study researcher Jeff Galak, an assistant professor of marketing at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business, said in a statement. "We are seeing a mismatch between the thought processes and motivations of gift givers and recipients."

For example, there are times when a vacuum cleaner, which doesn't typically have a "wow" factor, would actually be a really good gift, because it would be used for a long time, Galak said.

In a new paper, the researchers reviewed studies on gift-giving errors, looking for commonalities among them. The analysis showed that this tendency to focus on the moment of exchange versus the long-term usefulness of the gift explained many of the errors. Some of the mistakes included:

• Giving unrequested gifts in an attempt to surprise the recipient, when in fact, the recipient would prefer a not-surprising gift that he or she had requested in a wish list
• Focusing on tangible gifts that can be used immediately, when a recipient might really prefer an experiential gift, like theater tickets, that would result in more enjoyment later on
• Choosing a socially responsible gift, like a donation to a charity in the recipient's name in the belief that the recipient will feel a "warm glow" from the donation, when in reality, the individual would prefer gifts he or she can use
• Giving expensive gifts in an attempt to show thoughtfulness when, in fact, the price of a gift does not necessarily predict how much the recipient will use or enjoy the present

To choose better gifts, the researchers advised that people try to empathize with the gift recipient and think about gifts the individual would find useful over the long term, or during ownership of the gift. [5 Scientifically Proven Ways to Make Your Gifts Meaningful]

"We exchange gifts with the people we care about, in part, in an effort to make them happy and strengthen our relationships with them," Galak said. "By considering how valuable gifts might be over the course of the recipient's ownership of them, rather than how much of a smile it might put on recipients' faces when they are opened, we can meet these goals and provide useful, well-received gifts."

Forget About the Road. Why Are Chickens So Bad at Flying

Chickens may have wings and fluffy feathers, but they're fairly dismal fliers, often going airborne for only a few yards before landing.

The reason for their poor flight isn't as rhetorical as why they crossed the road. Rather, chickens are terrible fliers because their wings are too small and their flight muscles are too large and heavy, making it hard for them to take off, said Michael Habib, an assistant professor of clinical cell and neurobiology at the University of Southern California and a research associate at the Dinosaur Institute at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

But chickens weren't always that way, he said.

"We did that to them," Habib told Live Science. "We did it through the oldest kind of genetic engineering we've got, which is selective breeding."

The jungle fowl (Gallus gallus) — a wild bird native to northern India, southern China and Southeast Asia — is either the immediate ancestor or the closest living relative of the modern chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus), which was first domesticated between 6,000 and 8,000 years ago, Habib said.

Like other so-called "game birds," such as grouse, pheasants and quail, the jungle fowl can fly only short distances. This is because, despite their powerful muscles, they have little endurance. Game birds use their big flight muscles to take off in a near-vertical, rapid burst and fly for a short distance — called a burst flight — allowing them to escape predators.

But the modern chicken can barely achieve that, Habib said. That's mostly because people like to eat white meat, and so bred the chickens to have even larger flight muscles (or chicken breasts) than the jungle fowl.

"Big flight muscles are tasty," Habib said.

It might sound counterintuitive, but the chicken's large flight muscles impede its flight. In order to fly, birds need appropriate "wing loading" — a ratio of body mass to wing area. Birds need to have at least 1 square inch of wing per 0.6 ounces of body mass (1 square centimeter per 2.5 grams) to fly.

Given that the domesticated chicken has smaller wings and a heavier mass (because of its tasty flight muscles) than its wild brethren, it's no surprise that chickens can barely fly, Habib said. However, sometimes young chickens (which aren't as heavy as adults) can take wing, "but only for very short distances," Habib said.

That distance is so short that a large, fenced-in area is often enough to keep them from escaping into the wild.

"If they're close to a fence and the fence is tall enough, they can't take off steep enough to get over it," Habib said. "And if they're far from the fence, where they could have a lower [takeoff] angle, they don't have enough endurance to still be in the air when they get there."

"They're so close to being completely flightless that you don't necessarily have to put a roof over them to keep them in," Habib said.

Giraffes Are Threatened with Extinction

Earth's tallest land mammal, the giraffe, is now threatened with extinction, according to an update to an international list of threatened species.

Over the last 30 years, giraffe numbers have dropped by 40 percent across the globe, from around 151,702 to 163,452 individuals in 1985 to 97,562 giraffes in 2015, said officials who updated the threatened species list for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

The update was released today (Dec. 8) at the 13th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in Cancun, Mexico. 

Giraffes (Giraffa camelopardalis) live in southern and eastern Africa, with small, isolated pockets of giraffes also calling west and central Africa home. Before the reassessment, giraffes were considered a species of "least concern" on the IUCN Red List, a notation indicating the group is widespread and abundant. However, "habitat loss, civil unrest and illegal hunting" have decimated the population, the IUCN said.

Of the nine subspecies of giraffe, the IUCN found that three have populations that are increasing (G. c. angolensis, G. c. giraffa and G. c. peralta), five show declining numbers (G. c. antiquorum, G. c. camelopardalis, G. c. reticulata, G. c. rothschildi and G. c. tippelskirchi) and one has remained stable(G. c. thornicrofti).

To reverse the dramatic declines, the IUCN World Conservation Congress adopted a resolution in September for conservation action by various groups, including IUCN member states, United Nations' officials and others. These actions include raising awareness about giraffe declines, restoring the integrity of protected areas for the animals, and supporting already-created giraffe conservation strategies and action plans.

Officials also assessed the health of 742 newly recognized bird species, finding that 11 percent of them are threatened with extinction. For instance, a planned dam construction could wipe out half of the habitat of the Antioquia wren (Thryophilus sernai), and as such, the IUCN listed the species as "endangered." Some birds fared even worse, with 13 of the newly recognized species of birds being listed as extinct. These included some lost in the last 50 years: the Pagan reed-warbler (Acrocephalus yamashinae), O'ahu akepa (Loxops wolstenholmei) and Laysan honeycreeper (Himatione fraithii).

IUCN Director General Inger Andersen. "This IUCN Red List update shows that the scale of the global extinction crisis may be even greater than we thought," Inger Andersen, the IUCN's director general, said in a statement. "Governments gathered at the UN biodiversity summit in Cancun have the immense responsibility to step up their efforts to protect our planet's biodiversity — not just for its own sake but for human imperatives such as food security and sustainable development.

Trump Picks Strident Foe of EPA to Lead the EPA

President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma's attorney general and a champion of the oil and gas industry, to run the Environmental Protection Agency — the federal office that enforces nearly all laws that protect America's air and water.

Pruitt, among the nation's most vehement critics of the EPA and Obama administration climate and environmental policies, has forcefully opposed federal mandates for power plant pollution controls and cutting carbon emissions to curb Americans' impact on the climate.

Writing in a National Review column in May, Pruitt and Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange falsely stated that scientists disagree about the "degree and extent of global warming and its connections to the actions of mankind."

"That debate should be encouraged — in classrooms, public forums and the halls of Congress," Pruitt and Strange wrote. "It should not be silenced with threats of prosecution. Dissent is not a crime."

Related:

EPA Imperiled Under Ebell, But Agency May Survive Yet
Appeals Court Mulls Challenge to Clean Power Plan
The Suit Against the Clean Power Plan, Explained

To scientists — and most nations around the world — the science of climate change is clear, however: Human carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels are warming the climate at a rate unprecedented in human history, leading to extreme weather, rising seas, melting polar ice caps and innumerable other consequences.

The Obama administration's efforts to use the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon dioxide emissions is a cornerstone to its Climate Action Plan. The plan seeks to cut carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to prevent global warming from exceeding 2°C (3.6°F) as required under the Paris Climate Agreement.

Pruitt opposes the biggest part of the Climate Action Plan, a regulation called the Clean Power Plan, which uses the Clean Air Act to cut carbon pollution from existing coal-fired power plants. The U.S. Supreme court has blocked the Clean Power Plan from taking effect until lower courts decide on whether it violates the Constitution.

Shortly after the Clean Power Plan was finalized, Pruitt, as Oklahoma attorney general, joined 23 other states in suing the EPA to stop it from taking effect. Pruitt and Strange said the Clean Power Plan works by "executive fiat," and said that it will shutter coal-fired power plants and increase the cost of energy.

The New York Times reported in 2014 that fossil fuels industry lobbyists drafted letters for Pruitt to send to the EPA opposing its environmental regulations. The same year, Pruitt joined a group associated with the oil and gas company Continental Resources to oppose adding some of Oklahoma's threatened wildlife to the federal endangered species list.

Pruitt opposed the federal government's efforts to reduce regional haze in southwestern Oklahoma by requiring the state to install pollution control equipment on coal-fired power plants. In doing so, Pruitt said the EPA "usurped the right of Oklahoma" to set its own energy policy.

In 2013, Pruitt told told StateImpact, an NPR reporting project, that the EPA can serve a valuable purpose, but it has exceeded its mandate to regulate clean air and water by picking winners and losers in the energy industry.

"Some believe that we don't need an EPA, that they don't have any role at all," Pruitt said. "I'm not one of those folks. I think the EPA can serve — and has served, historically — a very valuable purpose."

EPA climate regulation experts said Pruitt's nomination signals Trump's desire to roll back many U.S. climate policies.

"My initial reaction: This is not good for climate law in America," said Michael Burger, executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. "Pruitt is a climate denier, who has stated his intention to dismantle EPA's climate regulations. We can and should expect he will attempt to do so, and that he will be sued every step along the way by states, cities and environmental groups devoted to continuing progress."

Robert Stavins, a professor of business and government at Harvard University, said Trump's nomination of Pruitt "does not portend enthusiasm for aggressive domestic climate change initiatives."

Stavins said it is less clear what Pruitt's views and actions will be on the many other areas of EPA's statutory responsibilities.

"We now have an EPA-attacking, climate-change-denying, Clean-Power-fighting administrator in charge of the EPA," Rob Jackson, an earth system science professor at Stanford University, said. "How many lives will we sacrifice to make the EPA more 'friendly' and 'efficient'?"

Rhea Suh, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement that the mission of the EPA is to safeguard public health and protect America's air, land and water.

"The American people did not vote to return the country to the dirty old days or to turn a blind eye on dangerous climate change," she said. "If confirmed, Pruitt seems destined for the environmental hall of shame."